


Night Walk

by mandymay21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Bittersweet, Castiel Misses Dean, Castiel-centric, College Student Castiel, Editor Castiel, Friendship/Love, M/M, Newspaper Article, Newspapers, POV Castiel, Past Character Death, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-05 09:14:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10303223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandymay21/pseuds/mandymay21
Summary: "I have wanted to write this story since my first time walking home as The Collegian’s Managing Editor last January. On a campus as busy as KSU’s, and with a job as busy as mine, my nightly walk allows me a brief period of silence, an escape from a frenetic daily routine of making a newspaper, Monday through Friday. It’s easy to forget about my own personal life when I am so consumed with documenting the lives of others, but my walk from The Collegian gives me time to remember. So every night, I think of Dean."





	

I am well acquainted with a certain part of the night -- the hour between three and four in the morning. Between these hours, garbage trucks make their languid stops around Manhattan, Kansas, sending rats the size of rabbits scurrying across the silent streets, searching under fallen leaves for scraps leftover from the tourists and students who flooded the campus the day before.

Twenty minutes pass between the time I close The Collegian’s front door in Kedzie Hall after sending another day’s newspaper to print and the time I step across the threshold of my apartment in Jardine. In those twenty minutes, starting when my wristwatch reads 3:39, I see and hear a world vastly different than the one I know during the daytime. I hear the occasional car from Anderson Avenue, and there is usually a faint smell of rising bread coming from Einstein’s. A few men and women huddle under sleeping bags along Denison Avenue, crowded on benches and tucked away on storefronts. The air is so quiet that the rustling of tree branches startles me. Cab drivers lined up on Claflin Road smoke cigarettes out of their windows and keep their engines stalling, though there are surely no passengers at this hour. Most nights, they look at me and nod toward their cars, but I keep walking. I do not need a ride.

I have wanted to write this story since my first time walking home as The Collegian’s Managing Editor last January. On a campus as busy as KSU’s, and with a job as busy as mine, my nightly walk allows me a brief period of silence, an escape from a frenetic daily routine of making a newspaper, Monday through Friday. It’s easy to forget about my own personal life when I am so consumed with documenting the lives of others, but my walk from The Collegian gives me time to remember. So every night, I think of Dean.

***

Dean M. Winchester ‘01. That’s Collegian style. Middle initial, class year. Our style guide dictates we write this for every student on campus. Our style guide has a certain notation for students who have taken time off. But it does not tell me how to write the class year of a friend who has died.

We met each other fall semester of freshman year, both of us placed in the same speech class. After my first botched presentation, Dean walked up to me with a crooked smile on his face and asked if I wanted to practice my next speech with him. We met occasionally to rehearse, more often than not getting sidetracked by conversations about anything else-- campus life, other assignments, Star Wars. It was nice to see a smiling face among the sea of students. A face that was smiling for me. 

It should have surprised me how quickly Dean came to mean so much to me, but Dean was just the kind of person everyone fell in love with.

Ironically, we grew closer when we were far apart. It was summer of ‘98, and we were both in Europe, backpacking alone-- Dean in Austria and Hungary, I in Spain and Portugal. We spoke every day, of ancient buildings and avenues, of bright green fields in Austria or dusty red hills in Spain. We spoke of our families, our hopes for the future and the people we wanted to become. We spoke of our fears-- Dean and letting down his family, me and being forgotten. Some days we felt lonelier than others. But we had each other. A man followed me down the street, I told Dean. He got lost, Dean told me. I had traveled that summer in an attempt to open up and come out of my shell, and these moments of fear and loneliness made this a difficult task. But for Dean, those moments could not surmount the overwhelming joy he felt from simply walking through an unknown city, meeting strange new people. He wrote to me about those people and places, about how young and adventurous he felt. Wherever he went, one thing was certain: Dean was sure to tell a good story. 

(Pictured: Castiel J. Novak '01, Dean M. Winchester '01, Sam Winchester)

 

I still know little about his death. I learned on a humid mid-July night, sitting alone on my borrowed bed in a hostel somewhere in Portugal. A vague email from the university. Dean had been hiking and slipped, fell into a whirlpool. I cried throughout the night -- my world had been shattered. 

I spent much of the next year trying to piece together what had happened, replaying scenarios in my head. I asked the people closest to Dean to please help me understand, but they themselves were struggling to comprehend the sudden and unexpected loss of Dean. Eventually, I gave up.

The remainder of my summer was extremely difficult. It had already been tiresome being a solo traveler, but now traveling alone while grappling with the recent loss of a soulmate was especially exhausting. There were multiple times where I encountered many “almosts” resulting from my numbness -- almost mugged, almost lost, almost sexually assaulted, almost broke and without a place to stay. It was an early morning hike through an area in Greece where there were magnificent rock formations with monasteries at the top when I accepted that Dean was gone. All along the way, I saw so many of these tiny red flowers. And I know it’s kind of silly, but I liked to think that anytime I saw red, it meant that I was on the right path -- Dean’s favorite color was red. 

*** 

Recently, as I walked home alone, between the hours of three and four, I thought of Dean’s hometown of Clinton, Kansas. The quiet community sits on a peninsula in the middle of Clinton Lake, just outside of Lawrence. The woods surrounding the lake are abundant with white-tailed deer, rabbits, and the occasional bald eagle. The lake’s steep bluffs, wooded shoreline, and clear water make it easy to forget you’re in Kansas. I visited Clinton for the first time in August 1998, for Dean’s funeral. I realize now, I have known Dean in death longer than I knew him in life. 

Every night as I walk my quiet mile, I grasp at memories. The sound of his voice. The way he threw his head back when he was laughing too hard. The cassettes he liked to listen to. The softness with which he returned my tentative confession of more than friendly feelings. I fear I am forgetting details.

Rewind three-and-a-half years. It was late May 1998, just before the end of the semester. Dean and I were sitting side-by-side in Hale library, booking weeks worth of trains and buses and hostels for our upcoming trips. I can’t remember what we said then, but we stayed for hours. It grew dark. We hadn’t noticed. The air was warm as we walked back together, past the College of Engineering, down Denison Avenue. Some students, we saw, opted to take taxis back the mile to their apartments. We laughed at the thought -- it was too nice out. We did not need a ride.

 

\-- _Castiel J. Novak ‘01 is The Collegian’s Managing Editor. He will miss his nightly walks._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! <3
> 
> Images from Google


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